THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE
                         FACULTY SENATE 

                                                             
Senate Document Number   5595S
Date of Senate Approval  3/28/96

Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

     APC Document 52: Catalog Changes in Mass Communication


Effective Date: Fall 1996

A.   Changes in MCOM 451

Delete: In Catalog 1995-96, page 166, under the description for
451 Professional Internship (3), the following:

Prerequisite: Students must obtain department approval for
internship credit, and should meet with the instructor to obtain
internship criteria and application forms.  Course offered every
semester.

Add: In place of the deleted entry, the following:

Prerequisites: Completion of 12 hours in mass communication,
department approval and instructor's permission.  (Grading is
S/U.)  Course offered every semester.

Impact: To our knowledge this change will impact no other
departments.

Rationale: These changes aim to (1) insure that only students
with a strong mass communication background do internships and
(2) reduce grade inflation. 

The basic criterion for this course is that students work a set
number of hours to the satisfaction of their supervisors at the
internship site.  Asking the supervisors to assess a grade does
not work.  They always recommend an A or a B.  Setting up other
criteria, like writing memos and reports, overloads the student
with basically needless paperwork.  The net result of all of this
is that instructors have been giving only As or Bs in this
course.  This has added to a problem of grade inflation in our
department.  We threw the question of how to grade internship out
onto the internet discussion group JOURNET and found that most
other schools have run into the same problem.  The universal
recommendation we got back was to change the grading method to
satisfactory/unsatisfactory.   



B.   Change in Mass Communication Major Requirements

Delete: In Catalog 1995-96, page 163, under I. Required courses
in the major, the following:

(MCOM 451 cannot be used to fulfill this requirement.) 

Impact:   1 - To our knowledge this change will impact no other
departments.

          2 - This may slightly decrease enrollments in other
MCOM odd-numbered electives and slightly increase enrollments in
Internship.  

          3 - There will be no staffing impact since we are
already running Internship every semester and during the summer.

          4 - Some students will graduate from UNCA with one
course less in mass communication.

Rationale: This changes the catalog wording to reflect our
current practice in mass communication.  We have for several
years been writing exemptions which allow students to substitute
internship for an odd-numbered elective.